Spiritual Teachings With Shunyamurti

Student Question: I’m still struggling with being able to discern what is my jouissance, or what I need to give up or not give up, and tonight you said something along the lines of: it’s not about giving up the activity, it’s about giving up the signifier of identity. Could you maybe expand on that or give an example?

“Shankara’s great teaching that revolutionized the Indian spiritual approach was that ‘All we have to renounce is the ego.’ You don’t have to have any external renunciation,” reveals Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And ever since then, theologians have been arguing about the difference between outer renunciation and inner renunciation. But it turns out they’re the same because the ego, although it’s inner, takes its signifiers of identity from the outer world. So the truth is the outer is the inner. And until you recognize that—that it is the outer activities and jouissances—which are forms of suffering that we like to interpret as pleasure but they create more pain than pleasure—as our markers, and that keeps the entire tissue of thoughts and actions and feeling states in a relatively homeostatic ‘stuckness.’ And by letting go of the outer, we are able to let go of the inner, and the more we let go of the inner, the more we let go of the outer.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 18, 2010.

Student Question: Do people who are becoming crazy realize they are becoming crazy?

“Often yes but not necessarily,” answers Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. But, “This can happen in so many different ways because the world is crazy. We’re living in a psychotic world. So very often one is attempting to escape from that into a kind of sanity that looks like craziness. And it becomes craziness because one loses touch with the fact that we need to be able to appear crazy—or normal, which is the same thing—in order to be able to function in this world and make it work for us.” But there is a higher insanity, and “in a way that’s what an ashram is: it’s an insane asylum for people who are crazy in a higher way and want permission to go completely mad without anybody telling them they have to be normal.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 18, 2010.

“One of the synonyms for yoga is purity,” explains Shunyamurti, the Spiritual guide of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “A yogi is someone who is dedicated to a life that is absolutely pure.” But there are various levels of purity. There is purity of diet, purity of lifestyle, words, and even purity of mind, “but then beyond that, the purity of spirit, the purity in which one’s attention is always directed to the ultimate source of purity: to the Godself within.” Shunyamurti emphasizes that “That God presence is always there, but the impure mind never pays attention to it—it runs away from it in fact—because of guilt and shame and a sense of inadequacy and lack that it’s always seeking to fill by possessing something or someone in the physical world, and those actions are impure because they’re based on the lie of the ego. The ego itself is impurity. It’s a false self.”

But, “when the mind is silent, and abides with the Source, the Supreme Beingness within, with the Ultimate Mystery, the Absolute—that is present, but can only be apperceived when the mind is pure and silent, that is when enlightenment, liberation, Self-realization are achieved.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 11, 2010.

Student Question: Once we have purified, what would keep us from falling into this trap—again—of ego-being, of being an ego?

“Wisdom,” explains Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Once one has graduated from school, you generally don’t fall into the trap of going through the same school again.” And therefore one wishes to continue one’s education rather than repeating the same lessons over and over again. And, Shunyamurti adds, there are many schools higher and more interesting than the one we are stuck in now. And “it gets much more exciting, more blissful. You see most people think it’s boring: “I don’t want to leave the ego behind because, what, silence, you know. What is that?” But it opens up into the most fascinating higher dimensions. . . . But until you touch the Mind of God—and recognize that it is possible to have a far higher intelligence than we are now operating from—that idea won’t even dawn.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 11, 2010.

Student Question: The other day I was watching a satsang of Ramesh Balsekar on the internet, and he was giving the explanation of Advaita, the manifestation of consciousness through the bodily organism, etc., etc. And he always emphasizes that there is predestination, that Realization happens to one bodily organism no matter what you do or not. And then on the other hand, I have these Buddhists talking about practices and merits. What do you think about that? And, also, there are many gurus from the Advaita tradition who will laugh at you and say, "Practice what? You already are that. You don’t need to practice anything in order to realize that. You don’t need to do anything." So what is the middle way?

“You have to practice intensively non-practice,” unveils Shunyamurti, the spiritual guru of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And although it is true that there is predestination, there is also free will. It may be predestined that you will decide to practice whereas someone else won’t. But that will only happen because you have chosen out of your free will.” And, in regards to spiritual practice, “as long as there is a false belief that you are that ego, then that ego better practice realizing that it’s not!” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 11, 2010.

Student Question: I was wondering how the ego evolved in the very beginning: so from the first person who had an ego.

“Humans didn’t have egos at first. It was a later cultural development,” reveals Shunyamurti, the director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Although it would take an entire lecture or even seminar to understand this, Shunyamurti briefly details the entropy process that affects the human spirit in which human consciousness becomes identified with an ego and a body image, and the potential return to our previous spiritual stature. Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 11, 2010.

“You are all sacred beings,” says Shunyamurti, the spiritual director of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. Shunyamurti further elucidates, “There are profane beings and there are sacred beings. The word ‘profane,’ comes from pro fana—before the temple; it’s those who stand outside the temple. And then those who enter the temple, become sacred beings.” And only by entering the “holiest of holies,” the most sacred temple, the realm of the Real Self, may we complete our inward journey. “We are in the temple because we know that the only way out of the suffering of the profane world is to enter into the sacred dimension of our being.”

“And so at the first level, yes, the body is our temple. And then there is another level where we realize the mind is our temple, the personality, the ego. But we have to go deeper within, beyond those levels, and let the personal levels of our being drop away in order to get to the transpersonal nucleus, the core, the Self of our Self. And to reach that Supreme Self requires the most intense purity and intensity of desire.” This is meditation. “And if we have that desire to find out the ultimate truth of who we are, and to achieve union with the Supreme Self that is within us, that is our essence, then that will be given.”

“And so until there has been a disconnect from the profane identity, and a complete reunion with the sacred identity—that is ultimately in union already with the Supreme Being because you are That. Until you are ready to live in the truth of That realization, then there will continue to be suffering and vacillation, and oscillation, and a lack of peace. But the moment that that desire is wholehearted, literally the doors of the temple will open. . . . So let us meditate with the intention that now is the eternal moment for the moth to dive into the Supreme Flame and melt into the infinite, eternal Self.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, March 4, 2010.

Excerpt: “Every meeting that we have is a Satsang. Sangha means a gathering; a community. And Sat refers to the ground of being, our essence, our deepest truth of who we are. And so we gather to touch into our Sat, our most deep level of being, to taste what Self-realization is about, and then to transmit it, to share it with others, and to learn to live from that place of centeredness, and strength, and authenticity, and love, and clarity, and wisdom, and the capacity for sharing, for reciprocity and mutuality in relationships so that we can be a blessing to the world. . . . if we can live in the Real, we will live in a state of oneness with all beings, and with the ability to be harmonious, to cooperate, and to offer the highest wisdom that we can download from that source that will be able to inspire us with greater creativity than the false self can manifest in an egoic life. . . .And so this is the human destiny: that we return to this highest level of our potential. And the path to do that is really very simple, but not easy. It’s not easy because it takes courage. It means looking within, and seeing what is not authentic within,     and processing it out; purifying the soul; eliminating those obstacles that separate your conscious mind from the Divine Self within you.” Recorded on the Thursday, February 25, 2010.

Student Question: Could you please explain—or highlight—the difference between the Sat Yoga approach and the traditional Buddhist approach?

“Well what we study here are all the spiritual traditions, and what you will find is that they are structurally identical,” elucidates Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “Buddhism and Christianity, believe it or not, are identical at the esoteric level, the Gnostic level of Christianity in which God and the soul are one. So ultimately it is the realization that there is a state of nonduality; we are not separate beings. That is only apparent, but it is not real.” And, as Shunyamurti concludes, “it’s the same path; the path is not different.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, February 25, 2010.